Jackson Guinn Yom Kippur War POS 467 Professor Wright Yom Kippur War of 1973 Major Actors: The Yom Kippur War of 1973 was primarily a surprise attack on Israel by Egypt and Syria. The Yom Kippur War however, is classified as a complex war according to Brandon Valeriano and John A. Vasquez’s study on the Classification of Complex Interstate Wars. Valeriano and Vasquez classify the Yom Kippur War as complex because of the number of state actors involved. Egypt, Syria, and Israel were the states most directly involved, and bore the brunt of the costs. During the time of this war there was a larger and potentially more deadly war on the cusp. The United States and the Soviet Union played a large role in this conflict, as they were able to project …show more content…
The establishment of the Jewish state was not accepted very cordially. The Arab states surrounding the territory to be given to the new Israel did not like the agreement. The Arab nations in the region united against Israel and even came to conflict in 1956. With the help of the British and French, Israeli troops were able to occupy the Sinai Peninsula. Israeli troops eventually gave back the lost territory to Egypt. Though Israel shared its borders with rival Arab countries of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria it was able to maintain its borders and nation state until 1967. In 1967 Israel preemptively attacked Egypt, Syria, and Jordan; this preemptive attack is know today as the Six Day War. In this war Israel was very successful. They gained a lot of territory. They occupied and held the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip. They took control of the Golan Heights as well as the West Bank. By the end of the war Israel had taken land from Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. Israel continued to hold this newly gained territory until the Yom Kippur War (Special Reports: Key Maps). It is right to assume that tensions never settled after this war and that a rivalry had taken root. Egypt could not just sit by with a large portion of its territory in the hands of a rival state. “Since the end of the 1967 War, Egypt’s prime strategic goal had been the return of the Sinai Peninsula, captured by Israel in the war” …show more content…
It is very unlikely that Egypt would have been willing to attack Israel on its own. So the Egyptian President Anwar Sadat started talks with Syria’s President Hafez Assad on possible military attack. According to Uri Bar-Joseph in his detailed explanation of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Syria would not have allied to attack with Egypt if they would have known Egypt’s intentions of not progressing the advance into deeper Israel held territory in Sinai. As it is recorded, Egypt’s intentions were to occupy the territory of some but not all of Sinai; they were to occupy this territory until the pressure put on by the worlds superpowers, the U.S. and USSR initiated